


Virgin Sacrifices

by ShevatheGun



Series: The Mistress: The Rise and Regrets of Tora Naprem [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (Not of Naprem), Agender Character, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bajorans, Canon-Typical Violence, Cardassians, Concentration Camps, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Original Character(s), Occupation of Bajor, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Scars, Violence, War, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShevatheGun/pseuds/ShevatheGun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All in all, for the first few weeks, Tora Naprem finds internment more a practice in boredom and dirtiness than one of fear. She keeps her aunts close and – for the most part – her thoughts to herself. Then, first summer arrives and brings Dal Tirek with it, and after that, Naprem’s teeth lose track of her tongue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Virgin Sacrifices

**Rize Workcamp, Jo’kala, Bajor – First Summer, 2328 - Second Summer, 2328** ****

* * *

> "Rize Workcamp, located near Jo'kala, was established mere months before the annexation, and soon after came under the oversight of Dal Kogol Tirek, who would eventually come to be known - after his assassination in 2352 - as the 'Headless Prefect'. Rize was a relatively simple predecessor to the so-called 'joint mining operations' carried out by enslaved Bajoran workers on the behalf of their Cardassian overseers, which would come to characterize the Occupation. Though it covered only a few square kilometers and was poorly outfitted, at its height Rize was responsible for almost 7% of the planet's net iridium output, and housed over four hundred workers in makeshift shacks charitably referred to as 'bunks'. Its layout - a small courtyard with an Overseer's tower at the center, framed on two sides by prisoner's quarters, on one side by soldier's barracks (which doubled as a cafeteria), and on another side by the iridium mines - became familiar to those enslaved during the Occupation, as it was often copied in the construction of the some one hundred and forty three workcamps that would spring up across the two continents in the coming years."

\- from the book  _Camps of the Occupation_ by Mara Ilra, Professor of History at the University of Bajor

* * *

The first thing she misses is hot showers. The sleeping accommodations, she can adjust to. Early on, when the camps are filled mostly with political prisoners – anarchists, heretics, protest leaders, intellectuals – there’s nearly enough bunks for all of them. Naprem and her aunts share a small, open-air hut with three other couples, none of whom have children. It’s the sort of crowding Naprem can get used to; thin walls that breathe are a staple of architecture in Eastern Province, where she grew up. Add in Onea’s loud snoring and Uru’s soft grumbling, and Rize almost feels like home. But the nights stretch on longer and hotter all the time, and Naprem wakes up every day with her hair mussed and her skin sticky, swampy with sweat. They’re permitted a single, five-minute ice-cold shower once a week. Naprem tries to enjoy them, but the water pressure is so high it feels like being pelted with nails. When her hair becomes matted and tangled, she’s dragged by a Cardassian guard into the showers to have it forcibly shorn off. Her bald head bruises easily on the dirt floor of their hut, but at least it doesn’t smell.

* * *

The second thing she misses is Bajoran food. In Bajoran prison, she could at least expect to be fed a standard five meals a day, with scant attention paid to nutrition and taste. The Cardassians feed them only once in the middle of the day, a meal of runny slop that’s a muted gray-brown and tastes the way algae smells: slimy and sour, almost fetid. Naprem barely keeps it down half the time. On their third day, Onea picks her bowl off the cafeteria table and uses it to gesture to a nearby guard. 

“You!” she shouts. “You there! What’s your name?”

The guard – young, from the look of him, his headfeathers kept short and his posture rigid – turns his head, as though he can’t believe a prisoner’s speaking to him directly. “Mine?” he asks, in an utterly disbelieving tone.

Onea doesn’t lower her voice, despite Uru’s whisperscreaming in her direction. “You have a name, don’t you?”

“I do,” the guard scoffs.

“What is it?”

“Megot,” the guard says. “But you’ll address me as ‘sir’ if you know what’s good for you, Bajoran.”

“I’ll address you as ‘spinoraptor’ if I like,” Onea tells him. “Megot, now, you look here. You have a grandmother?”

“I do,” Megot says, looking like he can’t decide between being amused and being incensed.

“And you’d feed her this?” Onea asks, belligerently. “This looks like it’s about to stand up and walk away on its own!”

“If it meant my grandmother would be fed,” Megot says, sharply, “I’d accept whatever I was offered and keep my mouth shut.”

“Sit  _down_!” Uru hisses, yanking Onea back into her seat. Naprem pushes her spoon through her slop, and Megot glowers at the three of them before resuming his circuit around the hall.

“Between the two of you, we’ll be lucky to make it out of here alive,” Uru says between her teeth.

Naprem reaches over to hold her hand – which is wrinkled and soft – until she finally stops shaking.

* * *

The third thing Naprem misses is her leisure time. It isn’t that she’s averse to hard work – quite the opposite. She hasn’t taken a vacation once in almost twenty years of teaching. She’s never felt compelled to take much time off, because for the most part, her work has always functioned as a part of herself. But she’s always been a private person, given to daydreaming and long periods of silence; she longs for her books, for a quiet moment to herself. In the camp, there are none. Every minute of every day is garnished with a collection of strangers, some disinterested, some not, all ever-present. 

Honestly, it’s the Cardassians she minds the least. The Cardassians treat her like she’s not even there, and she’s content to pretend the same. It’s the other Bajorans who insinuate themselves into her business at every opportunity, something which she forgives easily, but which she dislikes nonetheless. Her fellow prisoners are uniformly nervous and frightened, and providing them comfort is an urge she cannot resist, but which is a task that exhausts her in its endlessness.

At the very least, she learns on a daily basis. She’s not sure if she would survive without a steady stream of new things to learn, new information to turn over in her mind, to examine against her own knowledge. But  _what_  she learns is all deeply unpleasant: don’t make eye contact if you can help it; don’t complain; don’t run.  _Never_  run. Don’t talk at meals; don’t talk after lights out. Iridium is highly explosive in its raw state; minecarts only make a job easier when they move smoothly along a track; heat above the earth is nothing compared to the heat beneath it, where it’s dark and dusty and there’s no fresh air, not ever.

After that, the things Naprem misses are innumerable, strewn about in disordered heaps. She misses her students, though she’d never wish this on any of them. She misses softness – everything in Rize is hard and sharp, dry and unforgiving, from the ground to the air to the people. She misses music and literature. She misses running. She misses sleeping soundly through the night, and having clothes that fit, that flatter her. She misses praying aloud.

She misses choice. She misses freedom so much that it feels like her nails are being shorn back every minute that she spends without it. She misses safety.

She misses justice.

* * *

For the first few weeks of their internment, Naprem stays obediently quiet, mostly for Uru’s sake. Her aunt is sick with fear, shaky and certain of their impending doom. She’s never been in trouble in her life – something which, as a Tora, Naprem finds somewhat difficult to believe, but then, her mother was the same way – and she’s fantastically ill-adapted to it. She trips over herself to try and appease the Cardassians, and cannot understand their indifference or outright contempt towards her. She seems to think that good behavior will get them somewhere. Naprem knows from the very beginning that it won’t. But she hears her crying at night when everyone else is asleep – always stubbornly silent, but for her wet, sharp breathing – and it breaks her heart. So for Uru’s sake, she stays quiet, keeps her head down. 

It isn’t as if she’s the type to pick fights for the fun of it, after all. It’s clear from the moment they arrive that they’re not to be tried for Naprem’s alleged crimes, and within a few weeks Naprem realizes it’s because she’s already been sentenced. Rize is her punishment for advocacy and activism, and she supposes it could be worse. The real question is how long it’s going to last, and there’s no one to answer that question one way or another. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in particular in charge that would know the details of their cases. The Cardassians know them by their last names only, and aren’t amenable to answering questions.

Onea, Naprem almost never worries about. Esa, Naprem’s grandmother, was always the wildest of the triplets – Prophets help her to know peace – but Onea has always been a close second, and internment doesn’t slow her down. She’s as fearless and nosey as ever, and she walks with the same self-assuredness as she ever has. At every opportunity, she demands to know their guards’ names, and like most functionally intelligent adults they eventually tell her because it’s the only way to stop her asking. Naprem quickly discovers that the Cardassians are strangely unwilling to hurt her aunts – they’re by far the oldest inhabitants of the camp, something which seems to engender in the Cardassians a strange sense of respect. A word out of turn, and they’ll cuff  _her_  without hesitation or apology. But around Onea, they’re almost skittish; Naprem sees more than one of them scramble out of her way as she marches across the courtyard.

All in all, for the first few weeks, Naprem finds internment more a practice in boredom and dirtiness than one of fear. She keeps her aunts close and – for the most part – her thoughts to herself.

Then, first summer arrives and brings Dal Tirek with it, and after that, Naprem’s teeth lose track of her tongue.

* * *

Dal Tirek arrives at the camp in the middle of the night, almost a month and a half after Naprem and her aunts do. Naprem is lying on her back on the dirt floor in the uncovered section of her bunk, gazing up at Penraddo, which is just beginning to come into phase, looking more and more like a ripening gourd with each passing night. The sky is an open, purple canvas, painted with starlight, and the camp is quiet but for the pacing of the guards and Onea’s snoring.

Naprem is mapping constellations she doesn’t know, halfway in a doze, when the two Cardassians standing guard at the entrance to their hut leave, abruptly. She hears the scrape of their taloned feet on the gravel, and lifts her head. One of the other women in the hut – a political activist named Tisoh Kyko – sits up, looking around. The rest of the hut remains asleep, oblivious.

Naprem quietly gets to her feet and sneaks to the doorway, peering outside. There’s a growing commotion at the gate, some sort of reception. There are only a few guards who haven’t flocked there – one of them is Megot, who Naprem spies from across the courtyard, standing at his post in the center of the camp with his arms folded tight, looking prototypically sour.

The crowd parts after a second around a tall Cardassian with light green skin and a stern-looking face. Naprem can’t make him out well from the doorway, but she sees him fold his arms behind his back and bring up his chin, peering around at the darkened, dusty square of huts clustered around the courtyard. As the gate scrapes shut, she sees his face flex with disdain.

“How many?” she hears him ask. He has a cruel-sounding voice; thin, like a reed pipe.

“Sixty-three,” another guard says, coming forward. “Twenty more en route from Jo’kala.”

“That’s barely enough to fill a teacup with piss,” the Dal scoffs. “What work do they expect us to accomplish with eighty men? And they  _aren’t_  all men, are they?”

“No, sir,” says the guard. “But orders are to make due.”

Tirek scoffs again. “Very well,” he says, not sounding happy about it. “We’ll make due.”

Naprem turns her head to find Megot watching her from across the courtyard, his eyes refracting the moonlight. He maintains eye contact for a moment, then turns back to the congregation, shaking his head a little.

The group sweeps through the courtyard, guards filtering back to their posts. Naprem hurries back to her spot on the floor, feigning sleep as the Cardassians take up their spots on either side of the doorway.

“About time we got somebody,” one says. “That ought to put Megot in his place.”

“I’m just glad it’s Tirek,” the other says. “He’ll fill this place up in no time, get us up and running. We might be a real operation with a few more bodies.”

“There’s definitely room to expand,” the one says. “We could pack ‘em in, twenty, thirty a house. And we might as well. The planet’s ours, right? What’s the point in being patient?”

Naprem rolls onto her side and tries to swallow her dread, but it leaks out into her chest anyway, and keeps her awake long after the guards have fallen silent.

* * *

Tirek takes the heretofore unoccupied Overseer’s office at the top of the tower in the center of the courtyard. His office is floor-to-ceiling windows, the north and south walls conical, so that everyone must look up to him with respect, and from the moment he arrives he rarely leaves it, and instead stands aloft, peering down at the camp like it disgusts him. 

True to the guard’s chatter, Megot is in a foul mood from the moment Tirek takes over. He stomps around in a temper, bullying and intimidating the workers whenever he can conjure an excuse. The other guards seem to find this behavior more amusing than anything, despite the fact that it transforms life in the camp from an endless tedium to a living nightmare in the blink of an eye.

What becomes immediately apparent is that Tirek is a man of many rules and few second chances. On the first day, Naprem and the other workers are all lined up in the courtyard and sorted into new bunks alphabetically by name, with no regard for caste or decorum. Naprem doesn’t mind. She and her aunts go to stand by their new hut without quarrel. But when Tisoh Kyko – the woman who woke with her the night before, a  _Ke’lora_  (the daughter of a lawman) – is sorted into a hut comprised of only  _Mi’tino_  men - all of them well-fed merchant types - several of them raise loud objections.

“It isn’t right!” they chorus. “We aren’t meant to mingle with women of her station, it isn’t proper!”

The Cardassians strike them down quickly, mercilessly, but as the days go on and new laborers arrive, the infighting only grows worse. Twice, Tisoh Kyko sneaks into Naprem’s cabin to escape the harassment of the men in her bunk, and to reunite with her beloved, who sleeps in the bed at the furthest edge of the room. The Cardassians find her and drag her back out into the courtyard both times. The second time, Tirek descends from his ivory tower to see to her punishment himself. They flog her in the center of the square, and assemble everyone outside their huts to watch. She doesn’t cry out once, but her beloved does, and Tirek lays into Tisoh again and again as punishment. The  _Mi’tino_  men say nothing.

When it’s over, Tirek tosses her back towards her hut with what remains of her shirt. “Hear this,” he says, in his cruel, thin voice. “Any one of you caught out of your designated space shall be punished. For every one of you I catch, I’ll punish every previous offender. I don’t care if it takes days.” His tail sweeps through the dust, stirring it up. “I have a  _strong wrist._ ”

This time, it’s Uru who takes Naprem’s hand, holding it tight until she stops shaking, though she shakes through half the night.

* * *

Tirek stays true to his word – the next week, he flogs Tisoh and her beloved together in the square. The week after, he flogs them and one of the newcomers – an  _Imutta_  woman who hasn’t strayed from her assigned space so much as been forced out of it. 

New rules fall from the sky like rain. After a fight in the showers, showers are reduced to two minutes twice a week, with mandatory accompaniment by the guards. An escape attempt prompts mandatory bunk searches every morning; another prompts them every night. A man is caught molesting one of his female bunkmates, and they’re re-sorted into gender-specific housing. A woman throws scalding slop onto the  _Imutta_  woman for having the nerve to speak to her, and is punished by being branded on her upper lip in front of the entire camp. Naprem feels lucky that the horrifying smell of burning flesh has left her with a complete lack of appetite. It means that when she finally eats, it’s because she’s lightheaded with hunger, which makes the taste of the slop – now served cold – negligible.

Making religious gestures or religious references – idiomatic or otherwise – becomes subject to the same severe punishment as being caught praying aloud. This punishment is doubled when the guards catch them praying backwards, making up new gestures, recontextualizing old references. Every morning, Naprem wakes for role call to find at least ten laborers on their knees in the courtyard, locked into position by cuffs binding their wrists to their ankles.

She spends at least two nights there herself, knees going numb by the second hour, bleeding by the sixth, the pain in her shoulders so severe that she cries reflexive tears. On the second, a passing guard spots her quietly reciting prophecies from memory, and swings his tail, knocking her to the ground. The pain is so bad her whole body spasms.

“Just do it in your head,” Uru whispers to her after role call, when her whole body is trembling with exhaustion and pain. “The Prophets don’t care.”

“ _I_  care,” Naprem says, hoarsely.

“Just stay out of trouble,” Uru says. “Prophets’ sake, just  _stay_  out of  _trouble._ ”

But she can’t. New groups arrive every day, and the huts grow more and more crowded. Soon, Tirek makes a rule that they must rotate bed usage, taking turns sleeping on the ground. Naprem refuses, and when Tisoh’s beloved tries to force Onea to forfeit her bed for the night, they almost come to blows.

“My Auntie is a hundred and forty five years old,” Naprem says. “She’s sleeping in a bed tonight.”

“I don’t care if she’s the Kai!” Tisoh’s beloved shouts. “It’s not her turn!”

They’re dragged out into the courtyard and disciplined with the others: forced to stand at the edges of the camp, hands in front of them, without sleeping, and without leaning on anything for support. Tisoh’s beloved has the misfortune of being the second person to fall asleep where they stand, and when they collapse, the Cardassians wake them with a swift kick to the stomach.

“A little pain ought to keep you awake,” one guard says, hoisting them up.

They’re near enough that Naprem can whisper to them without the Cardassians overhearing. The next time she sees them start to totter where they stand, she begins to recite the Traveller’s prophecy, backwards, in a thick Eastern Province accent. Tisoh’s beloved blinks, then hiccups with surprised laughter, and the next night, they sleep on the ground at Naprem’s side without a word of complaint.

* * *

It’s nearing the end of first summer when Naprem finally begins to get nervous about the fact that Tirek doesn’t appear to be managing the cases of any of the workers. There have been no meetings to discuss the length of their sentences, and, as people continue to arrive at the camp by the day, Naprem is disturbed to find that many of them appear to have committed no crime whatsoever. 

The new detainees are from every walk of life, every caste, but all live in the cities and valleys surrounding Jo’kala. Many of them have never been arrested before, or have been arrested for only the pettiest of crimes. One girl – young, and accompanied by no one – says she was taken by Cardassian guards on suspicion of theft. Whole families claim to have been arrested on “suspicions of collusion”, a crime which none of them can articulate. A  _Te’Nari_  man tells Naprem he was taken in after a neighbor told a Cardassian guard he was an anarchist.

“I’d curse the sonovabitch, but he got arrested too,” he tells Naprem. “The Cardassians accused him of being a co-conspirator.”

The first, crisp bite of harvest season spurs Naprem to action. After their midday meal one day, she approaches Megot, who’s standing guard at the replicator, glaring bitterly out at the congregation.

“Hello, Glin Megot,” she says.

“Put your dish in the replicator and get back to your seat, Tora.”

“Of course,” Naprem says, placing her tray on the replicator pad. “May I ask you something?”

“No,” Megot says.

“I need to make an appointment to speak with Dal Tirek.”

“Keep mouthing off to me and I’ll make sure you get one,” he says with a sneer.

“It’s important,” Naprem says, as gently as she can. She’s learned over time that Megot is the sort of man that has to be allowed to think he’s better than you, and that you exist to service his ego, if you’re going to carry on any sort of conversation with him. “I need to talk to him about my case file.”

“What  _about_  your case file?” Megot asks, snidely.

“I want to know how long I can expect to be here,” she says.

Megot barks out a mean laugh. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” she says. “You’ll find Bajoran humor’s generally a little more, how you say…funny.”

“Oh, you love to get smart,” Megot says, looking at her like he’d like to knock her brain out of her head. “You think you’re the smartest thing in the room, don’t you, Tora? But you still haven’t figured it out. Because at the end of the day, a mouse is just a mouse, no matter how smart it thinks it is.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, annoyed.

Megot grins at her, showing rows of sharp teeth. “You’re here as long as we want you,  _mouse._  You look at your case file, that’s what it’s going to say.”

Naprem almost swallows her tongue. It feels as if the world is shrinking, or maybe she is; she can taste panic in the back of her mouth. It feels like she’s just been electrocuted, her insides molten and hot, her outsides cold and numb.

“What?” she asks, more weakly than she wants to.

Megot grins wider, clearly delighting in her shock.

“We own you,” he says. “The Occupational Government signed over every one of you miserable little insects. You’re ours until you’re useless, or dead, whichever comes first. Oh,” he laughs, cruelly, “I see, you thought…what? You’d come here and do your time, just go on your merry little way? No, no, no. You’re going to dig holes until we put you in one, Tora, and so much the better. That’s what you pathetic little rodents deserve.”

Naprem stands still only because she cannot remember how to walk away. Megot leans in over her, menacing, and she finally finds her voice, though it’s damnably quiet.

“You can’t do that,” she says.

“We already  _have_ ,” Megot says, with great smugness. “Sit down, Tora.”

“We are not  _slaves_!” Naprem shouts, and her voice echoes through the cafeteria. She hears the casual din of conversation vanish behind her, and she doesn’t care. “This is  _our home_ , you can’t—“

Megot strikes her hard across the face and she stumbles back. The cafeteria is silent – everyone is staring. Naprem breathes through her nose, refusing to reach up to touch the burning mark of his bone-sharp knuckles on her cheek.

“Sit  _down_ , Tora,” Megot says, coldly. “You don’t want me to ask again.”

Uru pipes up from the back of the room. “Naprem,” she says. “Please—”

Naprem clenches her fists at her sides.

“You can’t drag us out of our homes in the middle of the night,” she says, levelly. “You can’t force us to live in the dirt, to mine  _your_  iridium – you can’t force us together like animals. Not forever. Not without consequences. We are  _not_  your slaves. You are on  _our planet_. Whether you know it or not, you are  _our guests!_ ”

There’s a shout of agreement from the back of the room, and in an instant, other voices rise to join it. Megot is glowering at her, face rigid with hate. Naprem’s heart is beating hard in her chest, and she doesn’t care.

“You can’t keep us here forever,” she says, fiercely.

Megot strikes her again, and this time it’s hard enough to throw her to the ground. She catches herself with her hands, skidding a little across the tile, palms burning, cheek fiery and bruising, but before she can sit up he catches her hard in the face with his foot. The room booms with noise, the crowd shouting and yelling, swallowing her own cries of pain as Megot kicks her repeatedly between the ribs. Two other guards haul her up by her upper arms, and the crowd is riotous. The guards hold her still, keeping her arms restrained behind her as she struggles, bucking and twisting. Megot strikes her four more times across the face – each time it whips her head around, so that by the third strike, her neck aches more than her face.

“Take her to the courtyard,” Megot tells the guards, and then someone in the crowd throws their bowl at him, and the room erupts into chaos, food and china flying, prisoners surging forward to protect her. She escapes her guards as their hands go slack, and dives into crowd, which is like a living, angry sea.

Half an hour later, when the riot has been suppressed, the man who threw the bowl – the alleged anarchist with the nosy neighbor – is led to the center of the courtyard and shot in front of the entire camp. Naprem is led to the small detention center at the base of Tirek’s tower, and locked in a sensory deprivation chamber for three days. In the darkness and the nothing, all she can see is the anarchist’s face as they shot him: as though, in that last moment, he was almost pleasantly surprised by his own bad luck.

* * *

After she’s released – thrust, shaking and wordless, back out into the world at role call – the Cardassians act like they’ve forgotten the incident entirely. Megot grins at her swollen face, but otherwise does nothing; none of the guards do anything else to terrorize or discipline her. But the Bajorans avoid her like a plague, refusing to look at or speak to her. 

“Because you’re trouble, that’s why,” Uru says as Onea carefully tends to her face, which is still so badly swollen that her eyes leak constantly. “And now they all know it.”

“I can’t believe they killed him,” Naprem whispers. She hasn’t been able to speak above a whisper since they released her from the chamber a few hours ago. Her own voice frightens her, now.

“I told you,” Uru says. “I  _told you_. What did I say?”

Onea ‘tsks’ softly, shaking her head. “Turn your face towards the light, darling. There it is,” she says as Naprem obeys, though looking into the light makes the leaking much worse. “There’s my good girl.” She swipes under Naprem’s eyes with her callus-smooth thumbs, and Naprem sniffles once.

“You’re my good girl, Naprem,” Onea says, gently. “I’m so proud of you.”

“We’re going to be here forever,” Naprem whispers.

“Now, now,” Onea says. “Don’t think like that. We’re going to take care of one another, alright? We’re going to figure out a way through this.”

“I’m so sorry,” Naprem whispers. “I never meant to get you two mixed up in all of this.”

“Hush,” Onea says, but it’s Uru who takes Naprem’s hand and squeezes it, though she won’t meet her eyes. That night, they make Naprem sleep in their bed, though the noise of the camp won’t let her, and she shakes and leaks through most of it. She dangles her hands over the edge of the bed, and they each take one, holding tight all through the dark.

In the morning, they help her stand during role call, and fetch her breakfast in the cafeteria. Before their daily bunk search, Uru kisses the top of her head gently, says, “Just keep quiet. They’ll forget it all in time.”

But Naprem silently promises not to forget. The wound on her heart stays fresh long after the facial swelling goes down, long after the noise of the camp no longer phases her. She picks it open in her mind over and over, until it’s always as fresh as a scab, raw and pink on the surface of her mind.

* * *

She  _does_  try to keep quiet after that. New arrivals quickly deduce that she’s a pariah, and shun her on rumors and hearsay alone. Tisoh Kyko and her beloved are two of the only people who speak to her, even in passing. The  _Imutta_  woman glances her way oftentimes, but is shunned in her own right, and seems to avoid even those who show her kindness. She speaks to Naprem only once, when they’re both sent to the showers at the same time. 

“I think it was very brave what you did,” she says in a small voice. She’s so quiet that Naprem almost thinks she must’ve imagined her speaking, but when she looks over, the woman is staring at her under the icy spray, brown eyes calm and sad.

“You’re a very brave person,” the  _Imutta_ woman says. “I’m glad you said what you did.”

“Thank you,” Naprem says, softly. “I’m sorry so many people treat you cruelly.”

The  _Imutta_  woman shrugs. “People are cruel. That’s their nature. Someday, I’ll spit on them in death the way they spat on me in life. It doesn’t bother me. Not anymore.”

Then, the shower ends, and they walk back to their bunks alone.

* * *

More than the ostracization by the rest of the camp, it’s the mining that seems to really take its toll on Uru and Onea. Harvest season brings with it arid, cool weather that makes Uru’s ankles swell and Onea’s joints sore, and the mines are growing deeper as the camp grows more crowded. Sleep is hard to come by with everyone in such close quarters – elbows in guts and feet in faces – and the air underground is musty and hard to breathe. The minecarts are badly kept, and the iridium is heavy, and accidents are common. Many times, Onea loses her grip on a cart, sending it cascading back into Naprem and Uru, costing them several feet of progress, and costing them valuable minutes that the Cardassians begin to shave off their mealtime. 

“It’s these old bones,” Onea complains one night, as Naprem and Uru help her to bed. “They just aren’t what they used to be.”

But Naprem knows that isn’t it. Growing up  _Ih’valla_ meant never doing any real physical labor. Onea and Uru aren’t just old; moving heavy objects, sorting and digging, trekking up and down steep hills underground – these are all skills they neither learned, nor refined at any time in their lives. It isn’t that they’re incapable of hard work. It’s that they’re incapable of doing  _this_  kind of hard work.

She doesn’t worry about Onea and Uru’s productivity impacting her own – in her first few weeks, she built up her first small, sore muscles, and her first small, hard calluses. She’s always been fast, and she can push a minecart up a steep hill in a minute or two, so long as she’s managed her load well. But the other inhabitants of the camp won’t speak to her, and her aunts by extension, so when they’re delegated to different mines, they come home with bruises up and down their thin arms, their weathered faces beaten with exhaustion.

“You shouldn’t be working like this,” Naprem says one night, as she’s applying a poultice made from wild-grown herbs and weeds to an open cut on Uru’s hand.

“We don’t have a choice,” Uru says.

Onea hums, carefully combining cut leaves and stems on a flat stone on her bed, grinding them with a makeshift pestle. “We’ll figure it out,” she insists.

* * *

The new rules never stop coming from on high – at least one day in sensory deprivation for insubordination; execution for inciting a riot; one day without food for concealing anything in the bunks that could be used as a weapon; a public beating for gossiping about the private lives of the officers; a day and night standing in the courtyard without food, water, or sleep for approaching Dal Tirek out of turn.

By the end of harvest season, almost all the new rules have to do with productivity. Rumor has it, Tirek is getting orders from his superiors to increase the output of the camp without increasing housing accommodations. As the monsoon winds blow in from the West, making the air taste cool and wet, prisoners continue to arrive, filling the already full huts that surround the courtyard. In Naprem’s hut, they’re forced to sleep sitting up, knees against their chests, shoulder to shoulder. More than once, a fight breaks out when someone turns over or kicks another person in their sleep. Fights are always punished with public beatings, which demands the entire camp be woken up and herded outside to watch. Soon, Naprem struggles to tell the difference between these waking nightmares and her sleeping ones. She wonders when Tirek sleeps. He always seems alert and energized when he’s administering punishments, and he does so more and more often as second summer grows near.

The clouds are building on the horizon, making each day gray and dark with brief moments of blinding sunlight, when Tirek suddenly rules that the role call will be combined with bunk check, and the midday meal will be moved to the end of day. This means the workday stretches on for a full eighteen hours, from sun-up to sundown, with absolutely no food or breaks. In the first week, over seventy people faint, including Uru. Naprem and Onea manage to get her conscious before anyone notices. Anyone caught is forced to go a day without food. In the second week, the girl with no family drops dead, collapsing back into the minecart she was wheeling up a slope. Her body travels down with it, crashing at the end of the track. Tisoh Kyko sees the whole thing, and manages to get her  _dja pagh_  earring before the Cardassians recover the body and drag it away to who-knows-where. She shows it to Naprem during dinner, and they all share a quiet, silent prayer together.   

More than the food or the work, what most prisoners worry about is the weather. The open-air parts of the huts have received rudimentary roofing, but the Cardassians have taken no other precautions; they’ve dug no rain trenches, and the houses still have no doors.

“These huts aren’t going to hold when the first storm hits,” Tisoh Kyko’s beloved tells Naprem. “They’re built to breathe in the first summer heat. The wind alone’ll knock them right over.”

Indeed, harvest season has turned the night air bitterly cold, inhospitable but for the everpresent clutch of bodies crammed into every hut. As second summer approaches, brisk winds and light, misty rains have begun to push through the walls and the ceilings, making Naprem shiver herself to sleep most nights.

But the Cardassians don’t even seem to know what’s coming. None of them seem concerned about the thunderheads rolling towards them over the sea.

“Watch,” Tisoh Kyko’s beloved says. “Most of them shipped in from the lowlands. The rest of ‘em just got here. They won’t even know what hit them. “

Naprem can’t help but think that it’s more likely that the prisoners will be the ones to get hit the hardest. But they usually are, so it seems redundant to say as much.

* * *

On the day of the first storm, Naprem wakes early, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. The air is electrified, and the clouds overhead are bulbous and heavy.

She has to wait for the Cardassians to come around and usher them awake, but Onea’s awake early too, and as soon as she can, Naprem slips in close to her.

“It’ll be today,” Onea says, firmly.

“How can you tell?” Naprem asks.

“You,” Onea says. “You were born during the first storm of second summer. You always know. The sky calls you home, once a year.”

Naprem smiles a little, but dread makes her footsteps heavy. “I don’t always know.”

“But you know now, don’t you?” Onea says. “Trust your instincts.”

Naprem  _does_  know. She can taste it. Every time she breathes in, she can feel it on her tongue and at the back of her mouth. The wind tastes like the sea, and whips through the courtyard like the breaths of a giant, coming and going. It pushes at her cheeks and her back during role call. The sky is so dark that even the morning is like twilight.

But the Cardassians remain undeterred. After role call and bunk check, they shout out assignments like today is a normal day, and the signs of inclement weather are to go unheeded. No one speaks up to tell them otherwise. Words of warning ache in Naprem’s throat, but Uru grabs her hand and she swallows them.

They file down to the mines, and Naprem feels her unease threatening to twist into outright panic. There’s an ominous calm in the air, the prelude to something she wants no part in. She fights the urge to turn and run, to sprint through the crowd – could she make it to the gate, she wonders? Would her aunts survive without her?

They file into the dark like it’s any other day, set about their tasks. They travel deep underground, where the air tastes uncommonly bitter and sour, like mold, or the roots of an upturned tree. They move so deep into the mine that Naprem can neither see the entrance, nor hear what’s going on outside. There’s no sound but them, deep in the mines. It makes her feel almost frantic, like she could tear out of her own skin. 

They’ve been working for almost two hours when it starts. Naprem is pushing a minecart up a steep ravine when she steps in water. There’s a light trickle seeping down from the top of the slope, and as she pushes further the trickle becomes a stream, until the stream becomes a torrent. She slips once, barely keeping her footing, and manages to get the minecart to the top of the slope. Behind her, she can hear shouting and splashing, a low, incredulous curse from one of the Cardassians.

The water comes quicker and quicker until soon it’s rushing straight down the slope, sweeping people off their feet and into the formless dark. At the base of the ravine, the water level is rising steadily. Naprem rushes through it to where Onea’s helping Uru gather iridium shards, and grabs them by the hands, pulling them towards the cart track only seconds before the Cardassians begin yelling to evacuate. They scramble up the slick, steep hill, people falling and shouting all around them. Naprem pulls them up the last part of the hill, using the cart tracks as a ladder until they’ve made it to the top. They run to the lift, scrambling in just as it begins to rise.

“Wait!” the  _Imutta_  woman cries out from behind them, and without thinking, Naprem whirls and reaches for her, catching her hand and dragging her onboard when it’s almost too late. She’s soaked to the bone, and Naprem has to hold her close to help her fit. For a second, she’s terrified she’ll drop her, and then Onea and Uru’s arms wrap around them both tightly, and the lift grinds upwards, sagging with the weight of everyone on it.

Naprem releases her once it stops on the ground floor, helps guide her aunts to the entrance. At the mouth of the cave, the wind is whipping through the camp, battering everyone who comes close, and the rain is coming down in sheets. Megot is standing in the center of the chaos, trying to shout orders over the storm.

“Mine 3 is flooding!” one of the guards from behind Naprem yells. “We’re under two feet of water already!”

“So evacuate it!” Megot yells back, face contorted with fury.

“We pulled out as many people as we could!” the guard yells.

“No you didn’t!” Naprem shouts, horror gripping her heart. “There are still at least thirty people down there!”

Megot glowers at her, his expression poisonous. But he glowers at the guards, too.

“Get down there!” he yells. “We’re can’t afford thirty casualties with production numbers this low!”

“We could be killed!” the other guard yells.

“Yes!” Megot hollers. “I imagine you could! So try to do it with a little  _dignity_ , you cowards!

“You!” he yells at Naprem. “Get back to your bunk!  _Now_!”

Outside, the rain is falling so hard it drives Uru to her knees. Onea and Naprem help her up, trying to shield her and themselves. The storm is howling around them. The wind strips the grass from the earth, tearing it up like an insolent child and hurling it in the air, peppering them with wet leaves. The dusty courtyard has already been transformed into a mire of mud, thick and dark as oil. It smatters their legs and their clothes as they wade back to their bunks. It’s hard to even see through the rain – it drenches them, slicking their clothes to their bodies and plastering their hair to their heads, soaking their skin. They barely make it to their hut, crowding in beside forty other wet, shaking Bajorans.

The courtyard is swarming with workers as the Cardassians are forced to evacuate the quickly flooding mines. Naprem’s relieved to see the rest of the workers from her contingent being herded back; Tisoh Kyko’s beloved sprints back to their hut, large body heaving for breath.

The rain lashes the thin metal roof over their heads with greater and greater forces, wind sweeping through the courtyard. Megot and a small group of guards hurry into the lift of Tirek’s tower, and reappear at the top, speaking to him behind the glass with great, sweeping gestures. When they descend, the rest of the guards cluster around them to receive orders, then hurry out, taking their posts at the doorway to the huts.

“Lights out!” Megot shouts from the center of the square. “Take your positions for lights out, effective immediately!”

The guards snake their heads in the door and glare them into obedience – Naprem and thirty others hunker down to the floor, which is already wet, while the rest try to avoid getting their dirty feet on the beds as they twist themselves into knots to fit on their thin mattresses. The dirt-packed floor of the hut is grimy under her hands, rain leaking in under the foundation of the hut and through the open doorway. It stinks of mud, and wet hair. Several people are already shivering.

They sit like that for hours, listening to the storm get progressively worse outside until it’s battering the hut, slamming into the walls and tearing at the roof. The Cardassians outside are getting pummeled with rain, beaten with wind. Naprem can hear one of their guards wheezing strangely, as if he has asthma.

“Sutovr!” Onea yells over the wind. “You should come inside!”

The wheezing Cardassian turns his head to look in at her – he’s visibly panting, face dripping.

“Come inside!” Onea urges him. “The rain will make it worse!”

“You should listen to her!” Naprem shouts. “She’s a doctor!”

Sutovr glances at his partner, who shrugs, and the Bajorans shuffle aside, pushing into one another make room for him to stand inside next to the door. He looks around, a little awkward, breathing heavily through his mouth. But he nods to Onea a little, shakes himself dry. Water droplets fly around the hut, but it’s no worse than the rain – in about a half an hour, his breathing begins to even out.

The rain goes on and on, until finally, as the sun is beginning to set on the far horizon, barely visible between a gap in the clouds, the first clap of thunder booms out like canon fire overhead. A chorus of goes through the hut, completely automatic: “Blessed are the Prophets,” Naprem feels herself murmur. A second roll of thunder, and the chorus grows louder. “Blessed are the Prophets,” they say as one, chanting slowly. A whipcrack, a roar of thunder: “Blessed are the Prophets!” someone shouts, and the rest of them hoot and laugh, cheering and shouting with them. They can hear it from the other bunks, even as the wind makes the walls of their hut shiver and groan. “Blessed are the Prophets!” they chant, in time with the thunder. “Blessed are the Prophets!”

Sutovr looks around at them like they’ve lost their minds, looking out at his partner, who shrugs again, feebly. A powerful bolt of lightning illuminates the sky in a flash, paints the world in black and white, and a powerful crash of thunder follows it by seconds. “Blessed be the Prophets!” Naprem cheers, and everyone cheers with her. The sky beats itself black and blue, pounding the cymbals of the thunder, shouting in its own voice, and the Bajorans shout back, welcoming second summer in the way they always have, as the Cardassians stare around in utter confusion.

* * *

Sometime after the thunder goes quiet, Naprem jerks out of a doze. The entire hut is sleepy in the wet and the dark – her neighbor’s head rests on her shoulder, and she can hear Onea’s snoring, even over the sound of the storm. For a moment, she’s not sure what woke her. Even the air seems sleepy, heavy and cold. She turns her head – Sutovr is still awake, watching her through the dark. She watches him too for a moment, then turns her head the other way. It was something; she’s sure she  _heard_  something. 

Then, the wind butts its head against the wall of the hut, and Naprem hears it again: a sharp, metal shriek, not from overhead, but echoing across the courtyard.

She sits up straighter, turning around, trying to locate the source of the noise. Her restlessness wakes her neighbor, and then a few others. She hears them make angry, disgruntled noises in her direction and holds out her hand.

“I heard something,” she tells them, squinting out the door, through the rain.

It’s the hut across the courtyard from them – the  _Imutta_  woman’s hut. Something about it seems melted. At first, Naprem thinks it’s the rain obscuring her vision, but soon she realizes that it’s the front wall of the hut: it’s sagging in, slumping. The roof is slipping forward along it, groaning as the wind sweeps through.

Naprem’s on her feet in an instant.

“You have to get them out of there,” she tells Sutovr.

“Sit down, Tora,” he says.

“That thing is going to collapse!” she says, and her bunkmates are beginning to wake up, to murmur uneasily. “You have to get those people out of there!”

Megot’s standing at his post in the center of the courtyard, and he seems to sense a disturbance. He turns his head towards them, and marches across the square.

“What’s going on?” Megot yells, a little louder than the wind and the rain now.

“Nothing, sir,” Sutovr says, but Megot looks past him, sneering at Naprem.

“Tora,” he shouts. “You’re out of order. How am I not surprised.”

“You  _need_  to evacuate Bunk 5!” she cries. “It’s going to collapse, you need to get those people out!”

Other Bajorans are standing now, chorusing around her. Megot’s face twists with anger, and he gnashes his teeth.

“Sit down!” he yells. “You’re all out of order! Sit down, or you’ll be spending the rest of the night with Dal Tivek!”

“I don’t care!” Naprem cries, “Those people are going to die if you don’t let them out!”

But already, around her, people are averting their eyes, shrinking back, returning to their seats. She looks around with alarm, growing increasingly frantic. “What are you doing?! We have to help them!”

“Just listen to him,” her neighbor says.

Naprem feels like she’s losing her mind. She can’t believe it as she looks around and her bunkmates stare back, unwilling to move. “They need our  _help_!” she says, chest tight with anger and encroaching panic. “They’re our countrymen, we have to  _help them_!”

Megot snarls, teeth glinting even through the dark.

“Sit  _down_ , Tora!” he yells.

“Just sit down!” someone behind her chimes in.

“Sit down!” shouts another, and Sutovr looks over at her and shakes his head a little.

And then, from across the courtyard, there’s another deafening shriek of metal – there’s a hard, echoing boom, a pop of wood, a groan, and a crash as the outer wall of Bunk 5 collapses, the metal roof tumbling down on top of it. Naprem hears the screaming of the people inside over the wind, sees the Cardassian guards run from their posts before Megot’s even turned around, and before she can even think it, she’s bounded forward to follow them, leaping over the people in front of her, tearing through the doorway and out into the courtyard, sprinting towards the collapsed hut.

Megot’s tail whips her legs out from under her and she goes down  _hard_  into the mud, elbows-first. Mud spatters her face and slicks her front, and she can feel the dirt scrape her forearms, immediately insinuating itself into the cuts. She tries to push herself upright, gets her legs underneath her and runs a few more feet before Mekor’s tail slams her to the ground again, hitting her in the back like a steel beam.

He circles her slowly as she heaves for breath, clutching her side. He sneers down at her. “Get back to your  _bunk_ , Tora.”

The other guards have reached the collapsed hut, and are struggling to lift the roof. They’re dragging what Bajorans they can out into the mud, and the screaming is unbearable. Naprem breathes hard, rain beating her back, pain reverberating through her body, and slowly, determinedly gets to her feet. She totters a little, holding his gaze.

Then, she turns to look at the doorway to her hut. Forty Bajoran faces stare back at her, waiting for her to act.

“Please,” she says, calling across the courtyard. “ _Please_! They need our help! They’re going to die without it!

“Please,” she yells. “ _Please_ , help me help them. “

But no one moves – no one comes forward. Megot is watching her, tail flicking like this is a game. The people in Bunk 5 are screaming and sobbing, stumbling out into the rain as the Cardassians free them and immediately turning around to grab hold of the roof, trying to pull it up. Naprem starts forward again, unable to stop herself, and Megot strikes her to the ground, this time with his hand. Her side is smatted with mud as she goes down.

When she stands this time, her legs keep shaking.

“Please!” Naprem shouts, and it feels so futile, as though she’s calling on the sky itself for help. “We can live together, or we can die alone. They’re Bajorans. We  _have_  to help them!”

“Give it up, Tora,” Megot hisses.

But then, she hears footsteps in the mud behind her – hesitant, small footsteps, made with dancer’s feet. Uru stumbles to the front of the hut, and out into the storm. She looks at Naprem, and then at Megot. And then, she squares her spindly shoulders, and marches out to take Naprem’s hand.

“What are you waiting for?!” she shouts back at their bunkmates, and then Onea hustles through the crowd with Tisoh Kyko’s beloved, and a few others look at one another, then hurry out behind them. Then, a few more follow after them, streaming out into the rain, coming to stand beside Naprem. And then, from across the courtyard, Tisoh Kyko comes out of her bunk too, leading a band of five others, and then there are Bajorans emerging from every bunk, pouring out into the courtyard. Megot looks around with growing ire, but none of the other Cardassians seem to know what to do.

“Come on!” Tisoh Kyko’s beloved yells to the crowd, and as one they surge forward, pushing past Megot, rushing across the courtyard to Bunk 5. Uru and Onea dive headfirst into the wreckage, helping to pull people free, and Naprem joins the shocked Cardassians at the roof, grabbing its jagged metal edge between her hands. Tisoh Kyko and her beloved join her, and fifty more Bajorans join them, crowding together, lining up shoulder-to-shoulder.

“One! Two! Pull!” Naprem shouts, and on her mark they lift with all their might, struggling to get it up.

For a few perilous seconds, it feels as though it might not give. But then, Naprem feels it move, feels it begin to come up. “Come on!” she yells, and twenty more Bajorans rush in to help, grabbing the underside and pushing.

They push and pull, and the roof slowly lifts off the ground. The Bajoran beside her stumbles and slips, and the whole line feels it, crying with dismay – but then, she feels someone else rush in to fill their place. Scaly elbows rub hers and she turns her head to find Sutovr, pushing with all his might, biting his lip in concentration.

They lift the roof above their heads, holding it up, and soon they can see beneath it – bodies strewn in the rubble, twisted and broken by the collapse. But they’re alive; most of them, anyway. Naprem sees the  _Imutta_  woman among the living, staring up at her like she’s a goddess descended from the heavens.

“Come on!” Naprem shouts to her. “We’ll hold it!”

She feels someone push her aside, and then Onea runs forward into the rubble, grabbing the  _Imutta_  woman up by the elbow, helping her limp out. In an instant, a few more Bajorans have darted in after her, and two Cardassian guards, scooping up the survivors and helping them out. Naprem’s arms shake, and the metal roof groans, cutting into her hands. But she doesn’t give. She sees the Bajorans beside her duck their heads and lock their arms, sees the Cardassian guards plant their feet and anchor their tails, refusing to give an inch.

There’s another shriek of metal, and Naprem sees the center of the roof begin to buckle inwards just over Onea’s head. “Auntie!” she screams, terror gripping her heart so tight she’s surprised she continues to breathe. “Auntie, come on, hurry!”

But Onea’s hauling two crippled women on either side of her, struggling back through the rubble. The roof sags ominously, groaning. Onea huffs and jabs her fingers out at the Cardassians in the crowd, even as Uru pushes past the line to help her.

“Tilik!” Onea shouts as Uru grabs the woman on her left. “Modir! Stop standing there and help an old lady, would you?!”

Two of the Cardassians – Tilik and Modir, no doubt – glance at one another, then surge forward just as the roof begins to cave. They each scoop up one of the aunts under one arm and one of their passengers under the other, rushing back out with their tails held straight out behind them. The roof trembles, then collapses, the metal snapping and crashing back to the ground. Naprem lets go at the last possible second, just as the Cardassians rush back out into the rain.

The whole camp seems strangely quiet as the rubble settles. Many of the injured Bajorans are groaning, or crying quietly. Naprem has to take a moment to catch her breath. The cuts on her hands are hot, radiating pain, but she barely feels them. The rain is falling softer now, the wind a gentle push more than a roar. The storm is ending, tapering off slow. Tilik and Modir set her aunts down, and they come to her, and without thinking, she throws her arms around them and holds them tight, breathing hard against their warm, wet skin. She sees Sutovr’s partner clap him on the shoulder with a brief, sharp-toothed grin.

And then, they’re interrupted by a thin, reedy voice.

“What’s going on here?” Tirek asks from behind them, and the whole congregation turns to face him. Megot stands at his elbow, rain dripping from his chin, face twisted with fury.

The quiet stretches on longer than it should before one of the Cardassians pipes up. “Housing collapse, sir,” he says. “Storm brought it down.”

“Any casualties?” Tirek asks, disinterestedly.

“Three, sir. But that’s all.”

“Good,” Tirek says, and then he turns his mean face around, regarding the Bajorans. “Though that doesn’t explain all this. I believe its lights out.”

“Unavoidable, sir,” says Sutovr. “We needed the laborers to help us free the ones that were trapped.”

“Ah,” Tirek says. “So you ordered them to help you.”

The Cardassians look at one another, various shades of sheepish and uneasy.

“No, sir,” Sutovr admits.

Tirek narrows his eyes and tilts his head.

“Then who did?”

“Tora did, sir,” Megot says. His eyes glow with bitter triumph as everyone turns to look at her.

Naprem swallows her fear.

Tirek looks over at her with clear, cold contempt. He regards her as one does a particularly stubborn stain on a favored garment; as one looks at a hole in expensive canvas.

“Bajorans don’t  _give_  orders,” Tirek says. “They obey them. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Sutovr says, looking guilty as he glances Naprem’s way.

Tirek gestures loosely to the assembly. “Sort them into new houses. No,” he says as Tilik and Modir reach for the aunts. “Not them. I want all of them in the courtyard.  _Now_ ,” he adds, sharply, when no one moves to follow his orders, and then the Cardassians herd the Bajorans out, lining them up, sorting them into new houses.

Megot grabs Naprem by the arm and drags her back to the courtyard. Uru and Onea follow behind her in slow, unsure steps, looking around. Tisoh Kyko and her beloved stand in one line, clinging to one another; the  _Imutta_  woman stands across from them, holding her mangled, broken foot off the ground. They all watch them as they’re led to the center square.

“Stand up straight,” Tirek says to Naprem as Megot releases her, and she does, drawing her shoulders up and back. The rain is gentle on her head. Her clothes are muddy, but her body is washed clean. She refuses to shudder, even as the wind licks the back of her neck. Tirek folds his arms behind his back, pacing slowly around her.

“Glin Megot tells me you’re quite the troublemaker,” he says. “To incite an insurrection of this magnitude, you must be. What have you to say? Are you a troublemaker? Yes or no?”

Naprem swallows again.

“Yes, sir,” she says. “I believe I am.”

“And your aunts,” Tirek says. “Are they troublemakers, too?”

“No, sir.” Naprem looks at Uru, and her aunt clenches her fists at her sides. “Not at all.”

Tirek studies her intently.

“Disobedience runs in families,” he says, in his thin, cruel voice. “I ought to execute all of you right here.”

There’s a shout from the Bajorans that surround the square, a sharp outcry. “But!” Tirek cries over the noise, looking around angrily. “ _But_ ,” he snarls, “you’ve saved me the trouble of replacing a few dozen workers. So, I will reduce your punishment.

“Your aunts will not be touched. They’ve committed no previous infractions. But you, Tora Naprem, shall be beaten until which time I am satisfied you’ve learned your place.”

He turns his head, extends an arm to his second. “Glin Megot,” he says. “If you would.”

Megot grins, walking forward. Naprem swallows and steels herself, raising her eyes to his and lifting her chin. She can survive this, she tells herself. She’s been hurt before. She can take it. Megot pauses in front of her, tail swishing, droplets of rain flicking from the tip. The silence of the crowd is terse and angry. She stares at him, refusing to break eye contact.

The first blow still comes as a surprise somehow. He strikes her across the face, whipping her head back, leaving claw marks across her cheek. The pain is sharp and savage, hot and immediate. She lifts her head, looking at him again, and he strikes her other cheek this time. She lifts her head and he strikes, the feeling like metal on metal. She refuses not to meet his eyes after each blow, and it seems to make him angrier, until he’s hitting her so hard it’s making her gums bleed.

“Lower your eyes,” he hisses.

She glares at him, blood streaking her cheeks.

“Hold her,” he says to two of the guards, and they grab her by the arms. “Lower your  _eyes_ ,” he says, and then he hits her again, so her face collides with her shoulder.

She lifts her head and it’s so heavy. The rain is sprinkling over her skin like small kisses. She glares at him with her mouth full of her own blood, stinging and hot, and rage is a bolt of lightning across his face.

“Lower your eyes,  _mouse_!” he shouts, and he strikes her again, so hard it rattles her eyes inside her head. Before she can lift it again, he slams his fist down against the side of her temple, and she crumples to her knees with pain singing through her blood.

“Let her go,” he tells the guards, and they move back, and before Naprem can stand he kicks her so hard in the chin that it whips her head back, teeth crashing together, and she goes toppling over. She tries to sit up but he kicks in her in the gut and she goes skidding through the mud, wet dirt spraying over her body, howling where it lands against the cuts on her face.

She struggles, struggles to get up. Remembers the  _Imutta_  woman’s face as they lifted the roof, that expression of awe and wonder at her. She sits up, arms shaking, and Megot’s tail clubs the back of her neck, throwing her forward into the mud. She gasps, inhaling a mouthful of rocks and dirt, and Megot plants a foot in her back, slamming her down. She struggles, fighting to breathe, and he holds her there, talons curling against her back, carving through her shirt to the skin.

She remembers Uru and Onea holding her hands, and curls them in the mud, feeling it squish between her fingers, crushing bitterly into her cuts as her lungs burn for air. She remembers Sutovr’s scaly arm next to hers, straining to help, and pushes up, even as the points of Megot’s talons cut into her back. She remembers the surprised face of the anarchist when they shot him, and pushes up, and breathes an inch from the dirt, arms straining, chest heaving, sharp shards of pain echoing from everywhere in her body.

Megot crouches down and grabs her by the back of the head, nails cutting into her scalp. She cries out despite herself, and she sees his tail lash with pleasure.

“You can fight all you want,” he snarls. “But you’re never going to be free again. This is what you’ve earned, Tora. This is what you deserve.”

He turns his face to the crowd, calling out to them: “This is what it means to disobey orders! You are  _nothing_! I don’t care if you die – when we give you an order, you follow it! And those of you who can’t learn, like Tora, here—” He pushes the nail of his thumb into the back of her neck and she wheezes with pain, blood and dirt covering her face. “—will find life much more difficult than your peers!”

He stands, then, dragging her up by the scruff of her neck and shaking her in front of the congregation like a trophy. Naprem struggles to stay conscious, half blind with pain. Her nose and mouth are messy with blood – she’s only glad she can’t see her aunts. Her ears are burning with the sound of Uru’s quiet, angry sobbing.

She feels Tirek come forward, more than she sees him – when he touches her face, it’s a shock of cold. When he digs the nail of his thumb into her eyebrow she screams more out of surprise than anything else, but the pain is sharper than the rest. He cuts deep into her skin, so hard she can feel it against her brow bone.

“We’ll mark her,” she hears him say to Megot. “Excellent work, Glin. Well done.”

“Thank you, sir,” Megot says, coolly. “It was my pleasure.”

Then, he throws her forward, onto her knees. She can’t get up; her whole body burns with agony.

“Leave her here a few hours,” Tirek says. “Then, when you think she’s had enough, take her to the infirmary. Heal everything but the eyebrow. I want her ready to ship out by morning.”

“Yes, sir,” Megot says, and Naprem can’t find the strength to lift her head this time. When she’s sitting on the transport ship the next morning, wearing her new scar with Onea and Uru’s shoulders pressed to hers, it’s the only thing she regrets.

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes:
> 
> 1) The Bajoran year is 20 months long, with five distinct seasons. The first is winter, which is cold and arid; the second is spring, which is cool and mild; then comes first summer, which is hot and humid; then autumn, harvest season; and then second summer, which is monsoon season. During each season, a different moon dominates the night sky, though which moon it is differs from year to year. 
> 
> 2) During the Occupation, Cardassian guards frequently marked disruptive detainees with facial scars to clearly distinguish them as troublemakers. Scar placement would advertise the detainee’s crime to other guards: scars near the eye, brow, or temple were for verbal or non-violent insubordination; scars on the mouth or chin were for physical altercations with other detainees; scars along the nose were for physical altercations with guards; scars on the center of the forehead or along the scalp were for escape attempts. This system was never formalized, but was nonetheless relatively consistent between camps.


End file.
